PIVX achieves another world first with light node Zerocoin spends

PIVX developer furszy achieves a world first in enabling light nodes to freely mint and spend using Zerocoin with his Zerocoin Light Node protocol

Zerocoin Light Node protocol opens the path for Zerocoin use on both light wallets and mobile devices

PIVX is globally known for innovating within the cryptocurrency space. They
were the first proof of stake coin to implement the Zerocoin Protocol
Oct 2017 and within 6 months, the first cryptocurrency to offer private
staking with zPIV.(zPoS)

PIVX Android and Light wallet developer furszy has made history by
developing the first-ever Zerocoin protocol to function on a light node.
With it, light nodes can complete both Zerocoin mints and spends
without needing to request or store the whole set of public commitments
of Zerocoin.

A light node is a node which doesn’t require the entire blockchain to
be downloaded in order to function. It instead operates by downloading
the block headers and following the longest chain, relaying through
random nodes or elected trusted nodes, allowing them to do the heavy
lifting. However, as Zerocoin is a privacy mechanism, this alone is
impractical. To solve this, furszy devised a means to outsource parts of
the operation necessary without compromising anonymity in doing so. The
user is able to dictate how much of the process is outsourced, where
less being trusted to full nodes means longer processing time for the
light node.

The
benefit of this new and innovative protocol is for people can now take
full advantage of Zerocoin’s advanced privacy features whiteout having
to dedicate significant amounts of resources, such as hard drive space
and computational power.

This also means limited devices such as smartphones can now use
Zerocoin, where it was technically impossible before. To maintain the
highest possible degree of privacy using this method, users can select
their own personal full node as a trusted node, rather than using random
nodes per use. This way no light node is ever forced to expose
themselves to any unknown full node. Note that full nodes can never
spend a light node user’s funds, which remain safely under the control
of the light node user.

When asked how he felt about his achievement, furszy stated “I’m just
really happy to enable Zerocoin on light nodes. Being the first to
achieve this continues the PIVX way of always innovating!” furszy has
spent many long months perfecting the protocol through code revisions,
testing, vetting, and reiteration to bring us this new technology to the
world.

Zerocoin Light Node protocol is enabled in the latest release of the Light wallet and Android wallet.

Android Release v 3.0.0 Features include:

* Zerocoin HD BIP44 wallet (one mnemonic for zPIV and PIV)

* SPV Zerocoin Balance Sync.

* ZLNP implemented (new protocol).

* New UI for privacy and many corrections on the PIV side too.

* Syncing issue fix, multi-nodes capabilities added. * Bug fixes.

NOTE: Zerocoin features are included but not enabled until the ZLNP PR is merged into the core sources